One of the most effective rhetorical tools in normalizing massive military budgets is to treat spending billions — and sometimes trillions — of dollars as something one has to do in order to be “modern.”
“Modernization” is, after all, an attractive label. Who doesn’t want to be modern? Consider just a few examples from recent reporting on

What is the point of Ed Rogers, the Washington Post’s most conflict-ridden, mediocre columnist (FAIR.org, 4/23/15)? He doesn’t add a lot to the discourse, his boilerplate Republican talking points could be better

Which “conspiracy theories” the media decide to care about and which they don’t is largely a function of who is advancing those conspiracy theories, and whose interests they serve. The Atlantic published a 12,000-word cover story by Kurt Andersen on

The three most prominent US newspapers haven’t run a critical investigative piece on Jeff Bezos’ company Amazon in almost two years, a FAIR survey finds.
A review of 190 articles from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the Bezos-owned Washington Post over the past year paints a picture of almost uniformly uncritical–ofttimes